Sorting Through my Misspent Youth

As you know, I have been cleaning my attic for some weeks now, in the attempt to put it in shape as a comfortable guest room for company we're expecting this summer. Lambertville is a tourist town. We should have a guest room. What I didn't tell you is exactly what this exercise involves, and how it's not really about Martha Stewart's idea of a guest room, or even the guests, or having an orderly room up there.

No. It's about sifting through every item of memorabilia from my past and choosing what to keep and what to throw away.

I told you about editor Ray Roberts' exhortation to keep the original manuscript of UNBALANCED ACCOUNTS, my first published novel, in a safe place because it would be worth money someday. Or scholars would come around looking for it. I didn't tell you how disappointed he was with my second effort, how he made me rewrite it completely, which took so long that it didn't meet Little, Brown's publishing schedule and had to be postponed for months. THE DEATH TAPE in its final, approved form finally came out in July of 1987, somehow a bad month for a book release, and was reviewed only once, by Henry Kisor of the Chicago Sun-Times (Thank you, Henry). At least he liked it. I liked it, too. In fact I completely forgot about the crappy job I did on the first pass until I came across it yesterday morning while rummaging through the stuff in the attic.

I decided to keep it, just to remind myself. Or maybe I should pitch it out. Why am I hanging onto my old failures? What about this pile of Christmas cards from people who are now dead? Here's a first draft of the autobiographical novel I started. Some of the stories in it are killing. The time I mustered out for the interview for a job as a guard at Trenton State Prison, at a fighting weight of 107 pounds. The time I went to New York City disguised in a gray wig and a funny-looking polyester shirt to eat a steak dinner with my Manhattan bachelor lover. The time I sat up all one foggy night in a car with a private detective outside the apartment where my first husband and his mistress were living.

What rich fare that manuscript would offer the scholars. But there are no scholars interested in my work. The price of that manuscript Ray Roberts returned to me wouldn't send a dog through obedience school, much less put the baby through Harvard. As for the autobiographical novel—THE BODICE RIP'T, I called it; at least it had a great title—nobody is going to want it, no matter how funny it is. Or how horrifying. Mostly it's a horror story. My first agent said, "Katie, no one is interested in reading about your divorce unless you're Nora Ephron or somebody famous." So. Pitch it out? I do have children, after all. There's a lot of stuff in that book I'd just as soon they never found out about.

And so it goes. I really, REALLY want to get rid of the detritus in the attic, but as time passes it looks more and more likely that I'll put it in cardboard boxes and hide them out of sight for another twenty years.

Kate Gallison

The Trip So Far

On the road again.  I left New York on Monday for Matlacha (pronounced mat-le-SHAY), Florida on my way to the Historical Novel Society Conference in St. Petersburg.

My first surprise was the brand new Delta Airlines terminal at LaGuardia.  The space at the gates, rather than being filled with quasi-comfortable chairs, is almost entirely taken up with one-person booths, each one equipped with an iPad on which you can check the status of your flight, order food and drinks to then pick up at the bar, read uninspiring internet newspapers—like USA Today, or play hangman.  There is almost no place else to sit while one is waiting for a flight, except for a tight row of chairs along the windows, almost all of which are marked as reserved for the handicapped.  The whole place carries the air of that interstellar café from the first Star Wars movie, and you expect to see large hairy creatures with yellow and green striped horns playing music through their clarinet-shaped noses.

But I came prepared.   I had begun to read Deadly Harvest, Michael Stanley’s latest Detective Kubu novel, as soon as I laid my hands on it at CrimeFest at the beginning of the month.  But though it took a LOT of self-control, I restrained myself and saved the last half of it for the plane ride to Florida.  Good thing too, as the flight was awfully bumpy and only by putting my head in Botswana with Kubu and his new colleague Detective Samantha Kama could I maintain my cool with no one to hold my hand.  Kubu did NOT let me down.

The blue dot is the middle is Matlacha

Here I am now on a relatively unspoiled part of the Florida’s west coast, visiting my friend and fellow writer, Marta Rangel Gibbons.  Marta and her husband Michael are recent transplants to these precincts from up north and in addition to their home, own two cottages, which they rent.  They took me on a tour of them and ever since I saw the smaller one, I have been fantasizing how perfect it would be as a writing getaway when the snow starts to fly in New York round about next January.

View from the back deck of Green Cottage

Marta kindly arranged three appearances for me, the first of which was at a meeting of The Pine Island Writers, which took place just hours after I arrived.  I will go on to speak at the Lehigh Library on Wednesday and the Pine Island Library on Thursday, just before Marta and I set off for the HNS conference.

 It will be my first attendance and I am looking forward to it beginning on Thursday evening.   More about which I will post at some point soon.

Annamaria Alfieri

The People Behind the Stories

Suzanne Chazin (rhymes with raisin) has written three novels,The Fourth Angel, Flashover and Fireplay; short stories, essays and magazine articles. She was Senior Editor at Reader's Digest for ten years, and has taught fiction and non-fiction at NYU, the New School and Sarah Lawrence, in the City.

I met Suzanne when I moderated a panel at an MWA dinner (I forget on what). I was intrigued that she wrote about firemen, in and out of the firehouse. I wondered if she were one of those hardy pioneers who had broken into the ranks of the FDNY in the 1980s, then put her experience into books. Not so: her husband is a Chief in the FDNY, but she definitely knows her way around a firehouse. I appreciate her eye and the voice, as I think you will.

Robert Knightly

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I’m reading a really great mystery novel by Paul Levine at the moment called Illegal. But what first struck me about the book, before I ever got to the story, was the dedication:

To the woman carrying a rucksack, clutching her child’s hand and kicking up dust as she scrambled along a desert trail near Calexico, California.

I love that dedication because it reminds me that sometimes an inspiration for a story is nothing more than an image you can’t shake. The only way to make sense of it is to write about it.

My first three mysteries were set in the FDNY where my husband is a chief. Yet ironically, the image I couldn’t shake didn’t come from him, perhaps because I was too close to the story to see it. It was the late 1990s. I was working as a writer for Reader’s Digest and my editor asked me to spend three or four shifts (called “tours”) riding with the FDNY for a day-in-the-life story for the magazine.

I got clearance to ride with a rescue company—an elite unit that handles large fires and rescue operations throughout the five boroughs of New York City. As the only woman in an all-male firehouse, I got a quick education in how to “blend in:” get in and out of the bathroom quickly (and don’t put too much faith in the latch on the door). Get comfortable with being dirty and tired. And make sure you’re not the last one on the rig when a run comes in.

I did four night tours—6 p.m. to 9 a.m.—over the course of two weeks and developed a reputation for being “a white cloud.” That’s what they call a firefighter who never seems to catch a job. All the major fires and emergencies kept happening when I wasn’t there. But this gave me a chance to get to know the men and hear their stories.

I soon learned that one of the officers in the company had lost his firefighter brother, a father of three, in a deadly blaze in Queens two years earlier. On one of those long, sleepless “white cloud” tours, the officer opened up to me about the night he was yanked from duty, informed of his brother’s death and then asked to break the news to his brother’s wife. He showed up at their house in the middle of the night and found the whole place lit up like a Christmas tree.

She already knows, he thought. Why else would all the lights be on at 2 a.m.? And then he realized something worse: his sister-in-law kept all the lights on every night his brother wasn’t there. She couldn’t bear the darkness when he was gone. And here he was, standing on her doorstep, bringing her a lifetime of darkness.

Even though I was married to a firefighter, I had never allowed myself to picture such a moment. But that image of the house lit up like a Christmas tree spoke to me deeply, both as a writer and the wife of a firefighter. I knew I had to tell that story—not directly perhaps, but in a way that would capture the uncertainty firefighters and their families face consciously or (in my case) unconsciously every day.

I ended up writing three mystery novels about life and death in the FDNY. Now I’m working on a mystery series that concerns undocumented immigrants in suburban New York. This series also began with a moment. For several years, I had been working with immigrant outreach organizations near my home, helping to write the real-life stories of undocumented Latinos. During this time, I was introduced to a Guatemalan man in his late 20s who had nearly died of dehydration on two separate border crossings. I found myself riveted by his description of those harrowing journeys. Machetes held to his throat. Pistols pointed at his head. Desperate moments in the desert when he was reduced to drinking his own urine to survive.

But what really struck me were the circumstances that led to his second border crossing. He and his kid brother were living in suburban New York at the time. It was winter. Jobs were scarce. A garment wholesaler offered them temporary work in New England sewing clothes. After two weeks, with their wages in their pockets, they were ready for the trip back to New York. To celebrate, the kid brother ordered Chinese takeout—chicken and broccoli—to be delivered to the motel where they were staying. By the time the food came, the brother had fallen asleep so the man went downstairs to pay for the food. Instead of a Chinese delivery clerk, he was met by immigration agents who arrested him, shipped him off to a detention center and eventually deported him back to Guatemala. (His brother, by the way, slept blissfully through the whole ordeal and never got arrested or deported).

Imagine your whole life being upended over an order of Chinese takeout! Imagine having the courage and determination to undertake that dangerous, brutal, near-death journey all over again. (Not to mention still being on speaking terms with your brother afterwards.)

There are writers who could think up these situations out of thin air. Maybe it’s because I started out as a journalist, but my inspiration almost always comes from real people. Their stories keep me honest. And forever indebted.

Suzanne Chazin

Rejection

Do You Ever Experience Rejection As a Writer?

Not long ago I read a blog by the crime writer Connie Archer titled " Rejection" and it occurred to me this was a topic the readers of Crime Writers Chronicle might find helpful, perhaps a tiny ray of light on a dark and stormy day, when you just got " that letter " from your agent or publisher. I got in touch with the author of the blog and invited her to lend her article to us here. I hope this will help you feel your are in good company - we all have to experience rejection - it is as common as the air we breathe…

Thelma Jacqueline Straw

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Rejection… that thing we all dread—not just those of us who are writers, but every soul on earth. That cold dismissal, or the possibility of it, strikes terror into our hearts. How do we deal with it? How do we recover? As writers, we send our creation, our baby, out into the world to be possibly torn to shreds and rejected—the product of our blood, sweat and tears, the story we have labored over for months, perhaps years. How do we pick ourselves up and continue? Do we toss our manuscript in the rubbish heap and nurse our wounds? Curl into a fetal position and crawl under the covers? Weeks later, are we able to return to the keyboard to peck away at a new idea?

I came to writing rather late in the game after years of working as an actress. That craft was my first love (notice that I use the word craft, not business). But I’ve always been an avid reader and a rabid mystery and thriller buff, and finally worked up the courage to try my hand at one myself. Grinding out that first book took me a long time—a few years in fact. It wasn’t easy. It was terribly hard, but I was very lucky indeed because I was offered a contract with a wonderful agent. In fact, at the time, even though I was thrilled and over the moon, I really didn’t grasp just how fortunate I was.

During that time, I had a phone conversation with my new agent who, bless her heart, cautioned me that (1) there really wasn’t a whole lot of money to be made and (2) there was always the possibility, likelihood in fact, of rejection. Well, since I was amazed I had managed to not only finish a book but find an agent, I wasn’t too put off. My instinctual response was to say, “Rejection? Are you kidding? I’ve been an actress for years. I could write the book on rejection!” But for once I wisely kept my mouth shut.

I’ve heard from and read about writers who were devastated by rejection. Okay, that’s tough, I thought. But suck it up! Make your book better for heaven’s sake and stop whining about it. Rejection is when you finally get the interview with the theatrical agent you’ve been struggling to meet and at the end of the session, she says, “Thanks, dear, but I’ll pass. You’re different, but you’re not that different. I love the bracelet by the way, you can drop it on the desk when you leave.”

Disappointment is when you’ve signed with your next agent, then discover he’s been arrested for sexual assault—only on non-union women I might add. He didn’t want any hassle with SAG or AFTRA. Devastation is when your agent goes bankrupt and didn’t bother to tell you. In fact, they were holding your residual checks and now you can just get in line with other creditors for your money. Rejection is when you’re halfway through that riveting monologue you’ve worked on for weeks, paid a coach for direction, and a flat bored voice calls out “Next!” from the back of a darkened theater.

When I received my first rejection from a publisher, I was amazed! Okay, they didn’t go for my idea, thought it wouldn’t sell. But they WROTE BACK! I actually heard from someone that they didn’t like my book! Wow! Amazing! They responded. More than I ever got as an actress. Rejection always came in the form of deadly silence—the phone refusing to ring. For days you delude yourself that it’ll probably take a while for the powers that be to make a decision—after all there were only three people called back to the producer’s session. Surely I stand a good chance, don’t I? When in reality the producers made the decision three seconds after the last actress left the room. No one ever bothers to tell you or your agent.

I received a call one day from a good friend who was on a studio lot after an audition and had suddenly become incapacitated by depression.

I asked, “What happened? Didn’t it go well?”

He said, “Oh, yes, it went fine. But I was walking back to my car and passed a dumpster. A HUGE dumpster and guess what it was full of?”

“What?” I asked.

“Eight by tens. Thousands and thousands of 8x10’s. All those hopes. All those dreams. A dumpster full of them.”

Another friend once said, “The best reading is the one you give in the car on the way home.” She was referring to the phenomenon of kicking oneself in the backside for hours after the audition, wondering why you weren’t as brilliant in the casting session as you now are in traffic.

As an actor, you’re lucky if you have the script a day or two in advance. You memorize the lines, you research the show, catch an episode if you can, suss out the style, the pacing, second guess the producers and directors as to what they might want. Do your best not to psych yourself out that you’re not right for the job, fight the waiting room nerves, and when you’ve spent anywhere from twenty minutes to (I’m not exaggerating here) two hours to hear your name called, you walk through the door and face the firing squad. You’re being judged the second those people lay eyes on you. You must, you absolutely must, exude confidence. You’re prepared, you can do this, you have just a few seconds to slip into that character, cry, laugh, convince them that you are the person they need to hire. And then the director’s cellphone rings. He says, “Excuse me, it’s my location manager. I have to take this.” How rude, you think. And you know in your gut it’s more likely his wife calling with a grocery list.

So how do you deal with it? Rejection? Is there an easy answer? If there is, I certainly don’t have it. The only thing I’ve ever found is to do the very best job you can—no matter what the medium. Listen to criticism with an open mind. If it’s valid it will ring true. If it’s not, then trust your instincts and your hard work and keep on believing that what you have to offer is worthwhile.

We can’t control the marketplace. We can’t be all things to all people. Not everyone is going to love us, or love our work. But what we can do is to do the very best job possible, not be thrown off base, not be sabotaged by someone else’s ego or judgment. Know in your heart that your idea, your plot, your book is the very best it can be. The only true solace is to know you did the very best work possible. (And sometimes that even works in traffic.)

A well known director once said to me, “Always remember this. Those people on the other side of the table can’t do what you can do. They wish they could, but they can’t. There’s no reason to be intimidated by the ones who have the power to hire you. After all, they’re really just hoping you’re perfect because they want to break for lunch.”

Connie Archer

Website: www.conniearchermysteries.com

Facebook: www.Facebook.com/ConnieArcherMysteries

Twitter: @SnowflakeVT

Ghosts in the Attic

I'm cleaning our attic.

Guest room from Coastal Living.
Not my attic.

Guests are coming, and the finished, air-conditioned attic is our guest room. Ideally, it should look like something dreamed up by Martha Stewart, with fresh flowers, bottles of mineral water, plump pillows, chocolates (why should the hotel-goers have all the fun?) and a general atmosphere of restful sweetness. The reality in our attic is somewhat different. We have lived in this house for thirty years, accepted a number of unwanted gifts, taken up and abandoned many messy hobbies, and raised a son to manhood while heaping him with toys and enshrining all his schoolwork and youth baseball trophies. All this stuff finds its way to the attic.

Then there are my papers. When I heard some years ago that Toni Morrison's house had burned with all her old papers, causing her unutterable distress, I thought, Lady, you don't know how lucky you are. Of course, scholars want her papers. They don't want my papers. I'm going through my papers right now, throwing out things. I found a padded brown envelope from Little, Brown with the original manuscript of UNBALANCED ACCOUNTS, together with a little note from Ray Roberts, my first editor, may he rest in peace. It read:

October 31, 1986

Dear Kate:

Here's the original manuscript of UNBALANCED ACCOUNTS. You must be sure to put this in a vault. It will put the baby through Harvard one day.

Best,
Ray

I did not put the manuscript in a vault. Eventually I put it in a box under the guest bed with some early drafts of various books I wrote later. Nor did the baby go to Harvard. Now I have dug out the box and thrown the drafts away. I'm keeping Ray's note, and the manuscript from Little Brown. But not in the attic.

A list of things to address is posted on my old sewing project bulletin board up there. The papers came first. Next comes the sewing. I once used the attic for a sewing room, collecting attractive dress patterns and beautiful lengths of fabric until I had more than I could do anything with in several lifetimes. Eventually one faces this. I have an absolute maximum of ten more projects left in me. So now I have to select ten patterns and ten hunks of yard goods and let all the rest go, probably to the church flea market, along with most of my knitting yarn.

Thymes Frasier Fir:
a Really Good Air Freshener

After that I tackle the toys. I'll hang onto enough to keep visiting little ones amused, but most of the toys will have to be given away. Perhaps I'll paint the walls, hang a few more pictures, make curtains. Already it smells a lot better up there than it did, what with finding and cleaning up the cat dump under the bed and putting out a really good air freshener.

You might say, all this is too much trouble for a few overnight guests, Martha Stewart to the contrary notwithstanding. Perfectly true. The guests create a more or less artificial deadline for a task that has to be done. You see, I have to clear all of this crap out of the attic so that my heirs don't have to. No, it's okay, I'm not sick or anything, but who wants to wait 'til they're sick to clean the attic? This way I get to linger over all the old bits of my life, find a place for them or throw them out, get comfortable with the past.

When I'm finished with this work I'll scatter sea salt on the floor and say some prayers to take care of the ghosts. One of my friends told me there were actual ghosts up there.

Kate Gallison